apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

In wall or on wall, they both would be fine. It all depends on the speakers and the room treatment... and budget since you will have to either install or have installed... 'Do whichever' is my very valuable advice. A lot of in wall speakers have pivoting tweeters which means that even though they are flat against the wall, the more directional sounds can be pointed where you want them to give them the 'on wall' benefits.

in wall speakers, especially if you live in a small space.

I've installed the B&W in wall ones in my bedroom.. they are fantastic & Paintable..

http://www.bowers-wilkins.com/display.aspx?infid=3496

The 650's I think.. it's been a few years..

Sub woofers changed the whole argument of in the wall vs. speaker enclosures. Bass frequencies, for the most part, are less-directional and thus the physical placement of the sub woofer is not as critical as the placement of mid and high frequency speakers.

An audiophile would probably take me to task on that statement. But I'm an old Cerwin Vega guy who has blown a more than few breakers and woofers in his life time.

i just mounted my paradigm cinema 110's this weekend (wall mounted) and am very happy with the results. i think there's a lot of personal factors at play in your question. for me, our lcd tv stuck out from the wall about 4", and the cinema 110's are 4" deep. so overall the speakers aren't a big deal in my opinion. plus, the holes to run the speaker wire are smaller.

my neighbor has in-wall speakers and they sound good too (and look alright as well).

i'm a little biased because i'm really really happy with my paradigm speakers & the imaging on them is excellent (the design is minimal too).

I went with on-wall to avoid the hassle of installation and also b/c personally I found the in-ceiling or in-wall speakers cheesy, but that is just personal style preference. I have the orb audio classic 2 setup in the steel finish and have been really happy with it.

I think in-wall speakers look fine, not cheesy, but the thing is, what if I wanted to change the room around? I recently did this in the living room and had a new speaker system installed, and I feel relieved that I can reconfigure everything without hassle. Unless I had a dedicated AV room in a forever-and-a-day house, I would be less inclined to do in-wall anything except shelving.